Hurlshort

There is already talk in schools of moving towards Kindles as a replacement for textbooks. Some schools are already piloting it. I'd say in about 10 years it will be cheaper to supply students with Kindles than it is to adopt new textbooks.

I don't care about concurrent installs. I have a crappy internet connection. It is a legitimate concern. Last month, my internet died for two weeks. I was able to play my Steam games in offline mode. I was able to play most single player games using a CD. The one game I wasn't able to play was Starcraft 2, I needed to log in to even access the single player part. It was lame. But I get that Starcraft is designed around the whole battle.net MP scene. DA2, on the other hand, doesn't have any real good excuse for needing these weekly checks. You should be able to validate your copy, and then never go online again if you so desire. It is unnecessary. I'm pretty tolerant of DRM. I'm very anti-piracy and all that. But I don't see the point in this.

I am curious as to whether my Sharks can turn it on here for the second half. I think they are too talented to just melt down, but I really think a trade is needed to shore up the blue line. Unfortunately that probably means moving one of our talented but underperforming forwards. It will be interesting, my money is on Setoguchi being the most moveable, but I know cap room is an issue as well.

Actually I'm out in the boondocks, and my internet is spotty at best. I know quite a few folks who have the same problems. I don't mind an initial activation, I can usually get it to work long enough for that, but every couple days is a hassle. I just noticed the Steam version just uses standard Steam DRM, so that might be a better choice, except my internet connection sucks and downloading a huge game would be worse than the check every few days. Lame. There also doesn't seem to be any real rationale here. How does this prevent piracy?

That is pretty lame. What is the rationale?

It sounds like something out of the book The Giver.

Gah, that's crazy. I hope that is a photoshop job, it would be really depressing if Fox News actually put that map up.

Anyone watch the All-Star game? Looks like choosing players worked out well, it was a close game.

I went golfing today, it was a decent game. I hit a 118, which is a decent improvement over my last two times out. If I keep improving, I'll be happy. I'd like to get my game down another 10 strokes or so.

I love the idea of choosing players for this. The presentation itself was pretty bad, particularly giving Kessel a car at the end and then showering them all in confetti. I hope they stick with this format though. I was hoping they would try and opt for a bag of pucks before calling on Kessel though, just for laughs

They fought the law and the law won, big surprise. "Yet, we know exactly who was responsible for that attack. Anonymous believes it is unfair and hypocritical to attempt to put these 5 arrested anons to trial without even attempting to find those who DDoS'ed a website which you oppose." This is a stupid quote.

I've heard a fair amount of good things about it. I've come to realize these games are pretty hard to judge based on other people's opinions. I enjoyed the original and I thought Risen was phenomenal, so that probably puts me in the target demographic.

I'm still waiting on the Two Worlds 2 PC release. Maybe it will come out next week

I'm fairly optimistic about what I've seen Jerry Brown do with California so far. He's been cutting costs like a madman. It's clear he has set aside party lines and is trying to fix the deficit, hopefully enough legislators can do the same.

I will be a bit surprised if this game gets released this year. If they want to do the beta testing right, they need way more time. I believe they are still only doing internal beta testing. They should run a closed beta test with decent numbers for at least 6 months, then an open beta test for 3, then close it up again for at least 3 to fix all the problems found in the open beta. That is the way Blizzard did it, and they had one of the better launches in MMO history. Heck, they still had oodles of issues, whch shows how hard it is to launch an MMO.

I am teaching about the Yuan Dynasty right now, so I've gone ahead and brought this up as a talking point. Thanks for linking it, it's pretty fun to discuss

I refuse to acknowledge the existence of this DLC until it is released for the PC.

I can see why RDR gets all the GOTY stuff. It was probably the most impressive game I played on multiple levels. Great graphics, gameplay, story, voicework...the list goes on. That doesn't make it the most entertaining game for myself, but I get the praise.

Hmm, tough question, since I can hardly remember what came out in early 2010. I'd probably throw out a list like this: 1. FO:NV 2. Mass Effect 2 3. Alpha Protocol 4. Risen (I bought it this year, might be a 2009er) 5. Civ 5 6. MLB 10 The Show 7. Red Dead Redemption 8. Gran Turismo 5 9. Just Cause 2 That's about it, pretty good year. I'm never going to really understand all the flak AP took, I had a blast playing it. Other than Civ 5, it's also the most replayable of the bunch, it is rare that an RPG gets me playing it more than once. The only other real surprise was Just Cause 2, that game was a better sandbox title than RDR for me, just didn't have the same story.

According to Inside Two Worlds, Southpeak delayed it til 28 January. That's good news, I read somewhere else that it was delayed until February 8th.

So has anyone seen Two Worlds 2 for the PC in the US yet? It is supposed to come out today...

It depends on the gamer, but you can reach the level cap and the high level areas in most MMO's while playing very casually. I'm talking a couple hours a week or so. Sure, it takes longer, but with most games including rested xp, it happens. So I would guess most casual gamers in that boat would find it easiest to just keep a basic subscription that doesn't limit them, it's what I do. The f2p model seems to be best for people that are trying the game out, or play very sporadically. I'd bet you get more hardcore players putting money into MT's than the f2p people. I know folks with 7 or 8 maxed out characters, multiple accounts, and all sorts of storage means, and they play every day for hours. They jump at the chance to maximize their time online with bonuses.

I was pretty firmly against the micro-transaction model, until they implemented it into my favorite MMO, LotRO. The key is they still have a subscription model that gets you access to everything, and you accumulate points to spend on the extras over time. So a casual gamer can just pay the simple once a month fee, while a hardcore gamer can go nuts with bonuses to stats, xp, and travel.

It's more like "Investor says it is always better to bet against MMO's in general."

It's easy to be hopeful about ES games. Even if they turn out terrible, they are super moddable and someone will go through and make them better.